


Silent Running

by Susan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Susan/pseuds/Susan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has larnygitis..sort of...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Running

When Dean thought about all the other careers he might have chosen, if only his father hadn’t chosen this one for him, he sometimes thought he would’ve liked to be the guy who came up with the titles of porno movies. Like When Harry Ate Sally, or Saturday Night Beaver, or even School of Cock. The tenth grade guidance counsellor at a high school outside Pittsburgh had told him he should do what he was good at. He suspected she meant auto mechanics, but naming dirty movies seemed to Dean the perfect storm of all the things he was good at – sex, watching porn, and being a wise ass. 

He still did it sometimes – Blown in 60 Seconds or Star Whores – to pass the time when driving nowhere seemed to take all day. He wasn’t sure when it had started, and he’d deny it if Sam caught on, but Dean also found himself giving movie titles to the events of his life. The Year of Living Dangerously was how he thought of Sam’s first year at Stanford. Autumn in New York was that ghost in Albany who was convinced she was Winona Ryder. Drag Me to Hell was pretty much self-explanatory. Not that he ever planned to explain it to anyone. 

The week he lost his voice became Silent Running. When Dean told the story to Ben late one Friday night, when neither one of them could sleep – Dean for missing Sam and Ben for a lingering case of poison ivy – he told him how a trickster had once turned him into a wolf. How he’d howled at the moon so long that by the time Sam had convinced the trickster to turn Wolf!Dean back into Dean!Dean, he’d howled his throat raw. Even Ben – who now believed in all things supernatural with the same ferocity he once believed in Santa Claus – rolled his eyes. 

“I swear.” Dean placed his right hand over his heart. “Howling kills the voice.”

“You were a werewolf?” Ben scratched at a scab on his arm and Dean swatted his hand away. 

Dean held up the bottle of lotion Lisa had left on the coffee table. “More calamine, kid?”

“It’s pink. I don’t use pink lotion.” That was when Dean started thinking of Ben’s bout with poison ivy as Pretty in Pink.

“Your call, kid. And I was just an ordinary wolf. Which was totally awesome in a Never Cry Wolf kind of way. Only when it was over, I had no voice for a week.” He held an imaginary cigar to his mouth and did his best Groucho Marx. “But I did have a strange attraction to little girls in red capes.” 

The impression was lost on Ben. “So what did Sam do?” Ben always asked this at the end of all Dean’s stories. It seemed Sam had become the hero of both their lives.

“Threatened to tell Dad where I’d been. I shouldn’t have gone off hunting tricksters by myself. We made a deal. If I let Sam do all the talking for both of us, he’d go along with my strep throat story.” Truth was, John had never noticed he was gone. He was off hunting ghosts of his own – mostly at the bottom of a Jim Bean bottle. 

Ben’s eyes were starting to close- the extra dose of Benadryl was finally working – and Dean scooted sideways on the sofa. Ben’s head, his hair as dark as Sam’s, fell against Dean’s shoulder. Dean closed his eyes and remembered.

 

The diner was called Mommy’s and the sign promised home cooked meals the way a hooker promises romance. The waitress was named Melody and wore a white blouse two sizes too small. Or maybe it was her tits that were two sizes too big. 

Sam looked over the typewritten menu. “Fried – f-r-y-e-d liver and onions?” He rubbed away a stain on the plastic tablecloth. “Broccoli quiche? Should I tell them broccoli has two c’s?” Sam was two months away from Stanford and was already playing the role of too-smart-for-my-family freshman. 

Dean grabbed the menu. He couldn’t talk, but he could still fucking read. He pointed a finger at the cheeseburger special. Sam nodded and smiled. “Liver it is.”

Melody stood beside the booth, foot tapping impatiently, red pen hovering over her order pad. “What’ll it be?” She looked at Dean who looked at Sam who pointed to the back page of the menu. 

“He’ll have the liver and onions. Rare.” He ignored Dean who had started shaking his head and pointing to the picture of the cheeseburger. “I’ll have the chicken salad.”

Sam stared at her nameplate. Or her breasts – Dean couldn’t tell which. “Melody is a beautiful name. I love a good melody. Don’t you, Dean?” When Dean didn’t – couldn’t – answer, Sam added, “Actually he says he’d prefer a bad Melody.” Then he winked at her. 

Dean gave him the look he usually reserved for ghosts and men who drove minivans. He tapped on the menu again.

Melody ignored him. “Anything to drink?” 

Dean pointed to the word Coke. Sam nodded and ogled her breasts before answering, “Milk. My brother wants milk.” He had managed to make milk sound like a dirty word.

 

Dean managed his first words – rough and raw and sounding more animal than human – later that night. Melody, her legs wrapped tightly around Dean’s waist, managed a few words of her own.

 

Ben stirred beside him. “Dean?”

“Still here.” He scrubbed a hand across his face.

“Good.” Ben pressed into him and Dean wrapped one arm around his narrow shoulders. He knew he should take him up to bed, but for now it was enough to sit in the dark and pretend that this was the life he had chosen.


End file.
